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| E.V. DAY BRIDE FIGHT MAY 5 – AUGUST 26, 2006 The Lever House Art Collection is pleased to announce the installation of E.V. Day’s Bride Fight in the Lever House Lobby Gallery from May 5 – August 26, 2006. Bride Fight, a spectacular high-tension string up of two dueling bridal gowns is E.V. Day’s most complex and most ambitious work to date. Using heavy-duty fishing line and hardware, E.V. Day eviscerates the two white gowns along with their accompanying tulle veils, long lace gloves, garters, shoes and even strands of hair. A white glove grasps a fistful of blonde braid; another simultaneously bursts a string of pearls around the other’s neck. Frozen in the extreme of distention, the materials are captured in a thicket of hundreds of monofilaments at their moment of obliteration. Taking as her subject an eruption in the traditional social fabric-- the idea of two “glowing” brides locked in mortal combat—E.V. Day touches something dark in the American social unconscious. As opined on a web site announcing a new reality show on dueling brides-to-be, one blogger offers that “the reality is that with all the planning and frustration, by the time the big day comes 'round, Bridezilla is ready to kill and I am ready to watch.” E.V. Day’s piece may trigger such fetishistic responses but it is a work primarily characterized by the humor and anxiety that accompanies a transformation of tradition. Fierce but nonetheless liberating, Bride Fight feels more like the jouissance of exploded boundaries than the pathology of confined ones. In the dramatically extrusive trains and the majestic billowing of tulle, the implied brides in this piece take on a bit of a sci-fi or anime feel, where starchy capes fold crisply in stark chiaroscuro and pointy hair doesn’t blow in the wind. The dissection into intersecting planes of material also lends a 3D CAD rendered feel to the piece, making this very traditional subject feel somehow uniquely contemporary. Bride Fight developed from a series of installations called Exploding Couture, begun in 1999, in which Day suspended women’s dresses in space. For example, in Bombshell (1999), exhibited at the 2000 Whitney Biennial, Day took a piece of iconic attire (Marilyn Monroe’s white halter dress) and arranged it to feel as if the forces of the implied figure are so powerful that the garment literally blows off, as if outgrowing its stereotype. E.V. Day had a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum at Altria in 2001, where she installed G-Force, a work in which she suspended hundreds of thongs from the ceiling in fighter jet formations. Day had a ten-year survey exhibition last year at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University for which a color catalogue was produced. E.V. Day’s exhibition Intergalactic Installations is on view at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum From April 22 – June 18, 2006. E.V. Day is represented by Deitch Projects. The Lever House Art Collection is being formed by RFR Realty LLC, the owner of the Lever House Building, and organized by curator Richard D. Marshall. Four artists per year are commissioned to create works specifically for the landmarked Lever House lobby, and the works are exhibited in the glass-enclosed space for a three-month period. The lobby is open to the public and free of charge. Past exhibitions have included works by John Chamberlain, Barnaby Furnas, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Jorge Pardo, Keith Sonnier, and Peter Wegner; future projects will include installations by Sarah Morris and Folkert de Jong. FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT E.V. DAY PLEASE CONTACT ANDREA CASHMAN AT 212 343 7300 E.V. Day is represented by Deitch Projects DEITCH PROJECTS 76 Grand Street New York, NY 10013 212.343.7300 WWW.DEITCH.COM |